Rumbling With Russia

I CANNOT REMEMBER Vice President Richard M. Nixon showing off a modern American kitchen to the premier of Russia, and the premier sneeringly responding by allowing as how, yes, capitalism makes some people very prosperous, but generally causes civilization to descend into a materialistic amoral quagmire. When all that happened, I was but a wee lad, scarcely aware of plastic soldiers and tinker toys, let alone global geopolitical realities and the capers of "Trickie Dick". I do however, vaguely recall the same Russian premier banging his shoe on the table top at the United Nations, and wondering: "what the heck"? Is that how grown ups behave? Later I found out that indeed it is, sometimes, and often, they behave even worse. Khrushchev often behaved rudely, like the time he got up and walked out of a summit meetng in France, after interrupting a pompous but obligatory welcoming speech from the French, who welcomed everyone in the room to "France's ancient soil". Top hat and tails and all, Nikita was gone. But..."ah distinctlly I remember" as E. A Poe might say, ducking for conver beneath my wooden desk in third grade, 1963, gaining protection from Soviet nukes, which could come at any time. I wondered as a nine year old, and still wonder as a sixty six year old, what possible protection could have been gotten by buildings full of young baby boomers, cowering beneath wood and notebook paper, other than being saved from falling plaster, necessitating an after school shampoo. Still naive at thirty five, I recall how, in 1991, the break up of the old Soviet Union tricked me into believing that all that bad stuff was gone forever; that I would indeed not have to spend the rest of my life memorizing the location of every local bomb shelter, skaking my fists at make believe Russians as school - I played the part of the United States, two of my best friends pretended to be China and teh U.S.S.R. during spit ball fights in eigth grade social studies class, appropriately. But as they say, boy, was I ever wrong. Enter Vlad Putin, who believes that the disintegration of the old Soviet Union into its constituent parts was, and remains, the greatest global catastrophe since the Visigoths entered Rome, or something like that, and often says so. After having his sinister ass kissed by the deferential Donald J. Trump for four years, one can hardly blame the dictator for being a bit emboldened, now that a well intentioned but seventy nine year old good guy has replaced the obsequious devil himself in the White House. Khrushchev actually gave away the Crimean pennninsula to the Ukraine in a rare fit of generosity in the fifties, thinking he would have no further need for it. Putin wants it back, and wants back the rest of the former Soviet Union. And that, my fellow former nuclear bomb dodgers, is why roughly one hundred thousand Russian troops are presently massed at the Ukrainian border. No less an authority on the region than retired lt. Colonel A. Vindman, of Trump impeachement fame, estimates the chances that Putin will send 'em on across at eight in ten, and syas he hopes he's wrong. So do we all, except for the demonstrably insane, which incluldes many Republicans, appeasers and war mongers alike. One wayy or another, to quote Blondie, we'll find out soon; they must put up or shut up before spring, when swampy melting ice renders armor and artillary movement nigh impossible in western Russia and Eastern Ukraine. that vies us enough time to scope out any left over bomb shelters, but, mark me, I'll be damned if I'll go back to uselessly, theatrically hiding beneath a wooden desk, no matter what Putin throws at us.